He told Mr. McKinley that it was time to take his oath of office:  and standing bareheaded, his hand resting on the Bible, William McKinley swore to be true and faithful to the great trust he was receiving from the people.

His oath being taken, he kissed the Bible, and the ceremony was complete.  He is the twenty-fifth President of the United States of America.

The moment had now come for the new President to deliver the inaugural address.  Great anxiety has been felt about this speech, because it was expected that it would give the people some idea of the way Major McKinley meant to treat the several questions that are vexing us at the present time.

He opened his speech with these beautiful words: 

“FELLOW CITIZENS:—­In obedience to the will of the people, and in their presence, by the authority vested in me by this oath, I assume the arduous and responsible duties of President of the United States, relying on the support of my countrymen and invoking the guidance of Almighty God.  Our faith teaches that there is no safer reliance than upon the God of our fathers, who has so singularly favored the American people in every national trial, and who will not forsake us so long as we obey His commandments and walk humbly in His footsteps.”

He then took up the subject of Money, and said that he thought the Government wanted to look closely into the Treasury matters, and devise a means whereby we might be able to have as much money as we needed in circulation, without having to keep the enormous reserve of gold, which costs us such ruinous interest every year.

He would like to have all the laws relating to the coining of money and banking of money carefully revised, and to put our money system on such a sound basis that it will not be threatened with change at each change of party.

He said that he hoped to make the other Powers of the world agree with him about the wisdom of bimetalism—­which means the equal use of silver and gold.  Many of our present troubles have been supposed to come from the fact that we cannot pay our debts to foreign countries in silver, but only in gold, and that we have not enough gold to pay all the debts we owe, and so we are obliged to borrow gold from these foreign countries at ruinous interest, to pay back again to them.

President McKinley hopes that we may arrange with other countries to take silver or gold equally the one with the other, just whichever happens to be most plentiful at the time.

He went on to say that we must be economical, and try to reduce our national debt, and that the Government should not be allowed to spend more than its income, but that if it was necessary to increase the income to meet the just expenses of pensions for soldiers and sailors who had fought for us, and for the widows and orphans of the brave men who died for our country, he thought the money should not be raised by loans, which put the country still more deeply into debt, but by taxes, whereby each man could take his share of the expense of the Government which protected his home.